Category Archives: Uncategorized

It's been a big day for leaving this mortal existence. Folks who've never died before have been trying it. Here's another obit on Joe Simon and here are thoughts on three other people…

I've received several e-mails saying things like, "Well, I know you're busy writing about Joe Simon but I hope you'll find time to also write something about Eduardo Barreto." Eduardo Barreto was a comic artist from Uruguay who made a big splash in the eighties and since, working for DC (mostly notably on Teen Titans), Marvel and several newspaper strips. I never met Mr. Barreto and have nothing to offer other than a list of his credits which others can do a better job of providing. I can say that he was responsible for a lot of fine looking comics but anyone who ever saw his work could tell you that.

And I note the passing of writer Christopher Hitchens, following a much-publicized battle with cancer. Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, seemed to be appalled at the assumption by believers that upon facing his maker, he would recant every last thing he'd said during his life about there not being a God. I admire that he (apparently) held to his beliefs to the end and didn't turn to religion to try and cut a hypocritical last-minute deal. I also admired his facility with words. I didn't always like what he did with those words and thought he was largely though eloquently full of manure on many occasions. But even when I thought he was wrong, he gave me much to think about…and I admire that.

Lastly for tonight — assuming no one I care about dies in the next 26 minutes — I want to mention a man named Marvin Saul. When I was but a wee lad, my mother sometimes took me into a wonderful but tiny delicatessen on Pico Boulevard, just east of Westwood. The building, considerably expanded in square footage, is now a Maria's Italian Kitchen. But back then, it was mainly a deli counter with about five tables for dining. The two brothers would cut and sell meat and cheese to go or they'd build you a sandwich and personally serve it to you at one of their tables.

We became regulars at the Saul Brothers' little deli, which was called Junior's. They always recognized us and one or the other of them would give me a free shtickel…or maybe it was spelled "shtickle." I have never seen these anywhere else but they were like little salamis, each good for about four bites. It took longer to get the cellophane wrapper off the shtickel than it did to eat it. They were displayed in a little bin atop the deli counter with a handmade sign that said, "It used to be a nickel a shtickel. Now it's a dime. Ain't it a crime?" I have never seen them anywhere else and I wonder if anyone even makes them anymore. Once in a while, my lunch would consist of a shtickel and a pickle. If you want to grow up to write poems, try eating a lot of foods that rhyme.

Business was good at Junior's. It must have been because one day they moved into a much bigger building around the corner on Westwood…and then they began expanding that building, buying up the shops on either side and knocking out walls. Soon it was and still is a rather huge deli and Marvin Saul rarely cut the meat anymore. Instead, he ran the place with unceasing energy. If you walked in there at any hour, you'd see this man scurrying about and you'd know that was the owner. It had to be. (Marvin Saul's brother soon moved out to the valley and opened his own deli.)

Junior's is still a thriving business and I go there often. So does Mel Brooks, who is quoted in the L.A. Times obit for Marvin Saul, who just left us at the age of 82. I often saw Mr. Saul there — and Mr. Brooks too, for that matter. A lot of show biz folks considered Junior's a great place to "do lunch." Saul claimed to vaguely remember me, especially after I recited the little shtickel jingle for him. He said he didn't know where to get them or he'd still be selling them, though he laughed and said, "Well, if I did sell them today, the poem wouldn't work. We'd have to price them at a buck or so." I said, "You can say, 'It used to be a nickel a shtickel. Now it's a dollar. Don't scream and holler!' Or 'Now it's a buck. You're outta luck!'"

Anyway, thank you, Marvin Saul for a great delicatessen. And for all them free shtickels.

Here's the Associated Press obit on Joe Simon.

The tweeting of John Cleese (mentioned here) would seem to be a response to this article quoting Eric Idle. Thanks to Walt Grogan for calling it to my attention.

This kind of thing distresses me. Now, it is of course possible that Mr. Idle was misquoted or taken way out of some comedic context and it would be troubling if that is so. I've seen relationships harmed because one party was clearly misquoted…but the offended party never quite believed that.

But if the quotes are accurate in word and intent, why is this kind of thing spilling over into the public arena? There have to be some real troubles bubbling there for that to happen.

Here's a good but too-brief interview with the great cartoonist Jack Davis, who's the subject of a new book I'm eager to obtain. I'm not providing an Amazon link for it because Amazon isn't set up for it yet…but when they are, I will.

In addition to being the 54th anniversary of the debut of the first Hanna-Barbera cartoon show, today marks another historical event I want to mention. Early this AM on its hoary rerun of I've Got A Secret, GSN ran one from February 1, 1961 with special guest Spike Jones. Since they don't seem to be selecting episodes in any order (the one the night before was from '63), I wonder if this choice was because someone there knew that if Spike had lived, he would have been 100 years old today. Here's that segment from the show that aired this morning…

I was and still am a great fan of the fine and funny bandleader and at one point (as described here) came close to writing a book about him. I've collected most of his records…no small feat for he was very prolific. Actually, I should clarify and say that I only tried to collect the ones where he was credited because he also worked as an anonymous musician, arranger or conductor on hundreds of records for other performers…a great musician and a very funny man. I ran a Spike Jones clip here the other day without realizing its proximity to his centennial. I think I'll run a few more the next few days, starting with this one featuring a performance from one of his biggest-selling records.

You will notice Mr. Jones himself playing the duck call, which on the record label was described as a "birdaphone." (It said "Willie Spicer on the birdaphone." Mr. Spicer apparently did not exist. He was a joke credit on several of Spike's recordings. On Spike's "Hotcha Cornia," Willie Spicer played the "sneezaphone.") It is not known if Spike himself did the Bronx cheer on the well-known recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face" but it is known that he recorded two different versions of it. RCA Records was afraid some folks would find the razz offensive, even if it was directed at Hitler…so there's another version which just has a rude trombone sound in its place. Here's the authentic, albeit truncated-for-film rendition. The main vocalist is Carl Grayson…

John Cleese just posted two which, combined, say the following…

I see Yoko Idle's been moaning (again), about the royalties he had to pay the other Python's for Spamalot. Apparently he paid me "millions"… actual rough figures last time we checked – Yoko Idle $13m, Michael Palin $1.1m, the others just under a million each…

To those wondering when those wacky Monty Python boys would be reuniting soon for another movie or other endeavor: I think you may have your answer in the fact that Mr. Cleese went public with this. (And before anyone asks: I believe the reason Mr. Palin received more than the others was because at one point, he was going to co-write the show with Idle and did some work on it.)

Barry Mitchell, who often turns up doing funny things on ABC news programs, sends the following comment on my treatise on pie-flinging…

We had Soupy on World News Now in August, 1998. The director would not let him throw a pie at me for fear it would mess up Peter Jennings' brand new anchor set.

So we compromised: Soupy just pushed it in my face. Not quite as funny, but before he left the studio, Soupy reminded me to be sure to add the gunshot sound effect. We did, and it made all the difference.

Well, there you are: Verification of what I say from The Master. Pushing it in the face is not as funny as throwing it…and you need the gunshot sound. And not just any gunshot. Soupy had the perfect one which was more of a ricochet.

I wrote about my own experiences with Soupy in this article. As I've mentioned here and many other places, I made an embarrassing error in this piece when it was first published: I knew that Soupy's director on his syndicated show in the seventies was Lou Tedesco but I somehow typed the name of Lou Horvitz. Years later when Soupy's autobiography was being written — heavily ghosted due to his medical problems — his collaborator asked permission to quote from it and I, of course, granted permission. Anything for Soupy. Well, much to my surprise, they reprinted the entire thing in Soupy's book…including my Tedesco/Horvitz mix-up. So it's wrong in Soupy's book, which is where you'd figure you could go for solid facts.

I have no idea how to make an apple pie or a lemon pie or a peach pie or a nesselrode pie. I don't even know what kind of tree a nesselrode grows on. But I do know how to make a throwing pie…and you only have to look as far as YouTube to see that nobody else does these days. The site is full of videos of people throwing pies and they're almost all terrible. In about half of them, the pie-e (that's a two syllable word denoting the recipient) and the pie-r (another two syllable word and it refers to the thrower) is saying, "Okay, get ready. I'm going to hit you in the face with this pie."

Right there, they don't get the concept.

The person being pied is not supposed to act like they're aware the pie is coming…or at least not at that moment. They usually do know — Soupy Sales, the greatest pie-e of all time, certainly did — but half the joke is that they act like they don't know. And they usually should know. I am very much against pies as an assault weapon for reasons I covered here yesterday.

The recipe for making a pie to hit someone in the face is deceptively simple. There are two ingredients: A pie shell and shaving cream. Do not use a real pie. For one thing, they can ruin clothing and furniture. A guy I heard about once pied someone with genuine coconut custard at an art gallery opening. He not only ruined the fellow's suit but the pie got on several pieces of artwork and damaged them. For another thing, real pies either stick too much to the recipient's face or not at all.

If they stick too much, clean-up becomes a hassle. Soupy usually did his show live, remember. White Fang would smack him in the kisser with a pie and then they'd go to two minutes of commercials…and Soupy didn't have time to go shower and have his make-up completely redone before he had to be back on camera. Shaving cream wipes off easily and his crew could get it right off the walls and floors using one of those "wet vac" vacuum cleaners.

The pie shell can be real and it should be store-bought and brittle. "Moist" is fine for eating but if you're throwing, you want the pie shell to shatter on impact. The last time we threw pies on a TV show I worked on, the prop man bought pie shells at the supermarket and then baked them longer than one is supposed to bake a pie. That made this particular brand very fragile. The shell was kept in an aluminum pie plate, filled in that plate…but removed at the last possible moment before it had to be lobbed.

The shaving cream should be the kind with nothing in it…probably the simplest, cheapest brand. Do not under any circumstances use one that says "menthol" or "aloe" on it. It can sting the eyes so the fewer ingredients, the better. Fill the pie shell with shaving cream at the last possible minute. These do not keep well. Some brands of shaving cream turn (the pun is unavoidable) soupy within five or ten minutes. Then follow these important pieces of advice…

Very important and I can't repeat this often enough: Remove the pie plate. If you are stupid enough to throw a pie with the plate, especially if it's aluminum, someone should be throwing a pie in your face. The funny visual is to see the pie-e with cream and pieces of pie shell on his or her face and to see as much of their expression as is not obscured by shaving cream. It is not as funny to see a paper or tin plate stuck on their face hiding the entire expression.

Throw it, do not shove it. You may need to get close for reasons of aim but make sure the pie leaves your hand before it connects with the face in question. There are two reasons for this. One is that it feels more like assault and less like comedy if your hand comes into contact with the person. The other reason is that you want the pie shell to shatter on impact.

Establish the pie. In whatever scene you do, there should usually be a reason why someone has a pie…like it's part of a dessert buffet or something. The oft-pied Mr. Sales was able to get away with the pies just coming from nowhere but he was Soupy Sales and you're not. On his show, it was just taken for granted that everyone, house pets included, had a pie at their disposal whenever one was needed.

Establishing the pie is hard to do convincingly as audiences get instantly hip. They see a pie — especially one of those shaving cream deals — and they think, "Ah, that's going in someone's face." The easiest way to retain the all-important premise of surprise is to bait-and-switch. Set up a scene where it looks like Person A is going to throw the pie at Person B and then instead, it winds up in the face of Person C. And onlookers love it when instead of A hitting B, B somehow turns it around and pies A.

If you're making a video or film, a perfectly-timed sound effect is essential. Watch any clip of Mr. S. Sales and observe the expert timing (and remember, they did almost all of these live) as the sound of a bullet ricochet accompanies the delivery of the pie into Soupy's kisser. Half a second later and that pie would have been half as funny.

The pie-e is not supposed to laugh. They're not supposed to look like they wanted it to happen. They're supposed to look into the camera like Oliver Hardy or Wile E. Coyote with an annoyed look of punctured dignity. And lastly…

Less is more. Ten pies is not ten times as funny as one pie. It's like throwing someone into the swimming pool with their clothes on. Once they're wet, they don't get any wetter. The joke is the first time they get wet. If you're going to hit someone with ten pies, you need to have ten variations on the joke. And you need to not linger forever on the image of them covered with goop.

Follow these rules and you too can follow in the footsteps of Buster Keaton, Moe Howard, Clyde Adler (he was the main guy who threw 'em at Soupy) and other great Sandy Koufaxes of the Pie. And who knows? You may even get a laugh or two…though audiences have seen a lot of this so I wouldn't count on more than two. Thank you and class is adjourned.

Colleen Doran is one of the best artists in the comic biz these days and also a forceful, wise voice on the topic of how to be in that industry and not get swindled. It's happened to her many times and she often blogs about her experiences and how not to replicate them over on this page.

She has been abused in other ways, as well. Attractive women — especially those in the public eye — sometimes have these problems. There's a TV show on the Investigation Discovery channel called Stalked: Someone's Watching that deals with a situation that too many people take lightly or treat as some sort of to-be-expected "price you pay" for being pretty. Years ago, I was involved with an actress who was literally afraid to dine out in public because "he" might be lurking nearby…and the police wouldn't or couldn't do anything until "he" did something more illegal than scaring the hell outta her, night and day.

Colleen bravely tells her story on the episode of Stalked: Someone's Watching that is running this week. It runs later again tonight (10:30 AM on my satellite) and twice again next Sunday. Consult, as we say in the TV business, your local listings.

I just watched its first airing and it's a chilling tale. I'm led to believe that the authorities do more now about this kind of thing than they did when my friend lived in a state of constant worry…but they still don't do nearly enough. Perhaps if more "stalkees" like Colleen made their stories public, these situations would be treated more like actual crimes — which they are — instead of potential ones.

As a fan of slapstick comedy (the constant pics of Laurel and Hardy should have tipped you off to that by now), I see a certain beauty in the placement of a pie into the face of someone. It is, of course, an art…and like all forms of art, it is possible to do it very, very well and very, very badly. Tomorrow in this space, I will be discussing the proper way to "pie" someone and I will give you this one preview: If the pie has an aluminum or even a paper plate at the moment of impact, the person throwing the pie is an ignorant douchebag who should be forbidden by law to ever again hurl any kind of pie or other replica of baked goods. In fact, this especially applies if it's a real baked good.

This ban should also apply to those who employ pies as an assault weapon and I'm not kidding about that. I actually once saw someone get hurt by a surprise pie-in-the-face…not seriously but there's nothing funny about attacking someone out of the blue like that.

It was one of the stars of a TV show I worked on — not a big star but a small star, someone whose name most of you would not know. I would like to think that is not unrelated to the fact that he had been an enormous and difficult jerk all season to the point of being roundly disliked by the crew and his fellow cast members. It was the last day of taping and the Associate Producer, who had been the recipient of much abuse, had ordered up a Pie Hit — to be delivered right after this star taped the last line he or anyone on the show had to tape.

Just before the director shouted, "It's a wrap!", a pie sniper was signalled to do what he'd been engaged to do. He was from a company that would "pie" the person of your choice and I thought at the time, "What an odd occupation." Can you imagine the conversation when this guy goes home for Christmas?

"So, Phil, your brother Mike just passed the bar and your sister Alice just got admitted to U.S.C. on a medical scholarship. What are you doing these days?"

"I work for a company that sends me around to hit unsuspecting people with pies." His family must be so proud.

I don't know what the call was like for his services but they did not come cheap. As I later learned, the customer had to sign a form that stated they would be present at the moment of impact. I guess that was so that if the recipient got angry, the pie-r could point to the client and say, "He arranged it! Slug him!" You also had to sign a guarantee that you would cover all costs if a lawsuit resulted and all medical bills if the deliverer got kicked in the groin or slipped on meringue or whatever.

Our A.P. decided he wanted to "pie" the star so badly, he agreed to all that, plus that pretty hefty fee. This was the same Associate Producer who kept running in and telling me, "You can't do a joke about Grover Cleveland! What if his descendants decided to sue us?"

The way this particular assassin worked was via what looked like a lovely gift box. It was open on one side — the side he kept towards himself — and the pie was inside. He would walk up to his intended victim as if delivering a present and hand it to the unsuspecting about-to-be-pied person. The person would (usually) take the gift and as it was transferred to his hands, the pie-r would extract the pie from it and shove it in the guy's face, ho ho ho. That was how it went on our stage.

Funny? Yeah, I guess for a second. The crew all laughed because they figured it was scripted and part of the show and that the fellow knew it was coming. When it was apparent that none of that was so, the laughter petered out. The reaction was thereafter more like if a stranger had walked up and punched the guy in the face.

The star was so startled that he fell to his knees. One of the dancers on the show was, as they say, "sweet on him." In fact, earlier that day, the Associate Producer had walked into the star's dressing room and discovered this particular dancer doing what he said was a fine impression of Linda Lovelace. Now, she rushed over to help him up, wipe off the pie and help him back to that dressing room.

I ran back there to see how he was and, I guess, to make sure he understood that despite our own arguments, I had nothing to do with him being custarded like that. The dancer was crying and she was putting some sort of contact lens solution she had into one of his eyes which was all red and swollen. The pie-r had hit him hard and apparently shoved crumbs of crust into and around his target's left cornea. Soupy Sales always knew to close his eyes at the last second…but Soupy Sales always knew a pie was coming. The star had hurt his knee too when he went down.

The dancer was probably more upset than the star. He looked up at me and said, "I guess I deserved that, huh?"

I said, "Nah. You maybe deserved a small tart but not a whole pie. At worst, a twinkie or a cupcake."

He thought for a second and asked, "Did the whole crew vote me this?"

I said, "No. And it wasn't me or any of the writers. But don't ask me who did."

"I won't," he said as he got up. "But I know what I've got to do." He started heading back out to the stage despite his dancer friend urging him to remain seated and let the swelling in his eye go down. She and I both followed him out there…and I wasn't sure what he was going to do. He couldn't very well start punching out everyone who had a reason to be mad at him.

He walked back out to the exact spot where the "hit" had been made and he called out for everyone's attention. Crew members were striking the set and moving scenery away but everyone stopped. And when he had near-silence, he announced — in a pretty loud voice because the microphones had all been shut down — "I want you to all hear the card that came with the pie." There was a little gift tag on the pie box and he pulled it out of his shirt pocket and read, "Thanks for a great season and for being a tremendous asshole!" He said that last word with a laugh and then said, "I'm sorry, everyone." The whole crew applauded him.

They might have applauded more if they'd seen what the card actually said. It said, "Thanks for a great season and for being a great sport!" It was the guy's best moment on that show…but you know what? I still think it was a crappy thing to do to someone.

Tomorrow in this space, I'll tell you the right way to make and throw a pie…and most important, when.

No, I haven't been neglecting you, dear Blog Audience. I've been working on a script but, more important, I've been configuring the software for the new version of this blog which will debut around or about the time they drop that big ball in Times Square. What's here won't change much from your vantage point — a slight redesign for cosmetic purposes — but the new software will make life easier on my end. None of the old postings will go away, though they may be offline for a week or two during the transition.

Yesterday (well, Saturday), I had to go out to the valley and my route took me past Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, one of the great bottleneck traffic-jamming intersections on this planet. Making things more snarly than usual was a huge protest demonstration with people yelling and waving signs.

What were they protesting? I haven't the foggiest. Though the glacier-like flow of autos past them enabled me to watch the protest for three or four minutes, I have no idea what their crusade was about. The chanting was unintelligible. The signs were either illegible or hopelessly vague. One said, "Action now!" Another said, "We Won't Take It Any Longer!" If not for the fact that the signs had 3rd grade penmanship, I'd have suspected someone had ordered a set of generic picket signs, guaranteed to fit any strike, outburst or demonstration.

I felt bad for them. They were out there all day making a passioned effort for their cause, one I wholeheartedly support…

…or not. I have no idea. Maybe I should be glad they weren't getting their message across.

Here's an article that asks the musical question, "Is the Internet transforming — or destroying — the magic of magic?" I'll write more on this topic when I don't have such a busy day…but I think the answer is a little of each. And one of the interesting aspects to all of this is this odd situation: People write websites and post YouTube videos that purport to "expose" how David Copperfield does this trick or Criss Angel does that trick and at least half the time it seems, the explanations are bogus…but they satisfy the curious.

Years ago, I went to see Penn & Teller back when they were at Bally's and Penn did a rather basic (but still impressive) fire-eating trick. As my companion and I were exiting, we overheard a conversation between two other audience members — a blonde in her twenties and a guy desperately wanted to impress her. She wondered aloud how Penn did that trick with the fire.

The gent said, "Oh, that's easy. They use a thing called Cold Fire. It's like dry ice…you know, ice that isn't really cold. Cold Fire flames like real fire but it's harmless and not at all hot. It's a chemical you can buy in any magic shop. I used to play around with it when I was a kid." And then he told this story of how he once set himself seemingly on fire and ran into his mother's tea party screaming and caused everyone to pass out and/or spill their orange pekoe. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

The photo of Jerry Robinson below is the one the Associated Press supplied to its client news outlets along with their obituary…and no, I didn't get it from them. They got it from me. I was amused that many of those news sites captioned it something like, "In this undated photo provided by Mark Evanier, artist Jerry Robinson is shown. — Photo by AP." That's their way of saying, "If it turns out that this isn't Jerry Robinson, it's because that Evanier guy lied to us."

I took the photo at the big National Cartoonists Society bash in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1993. I believe the gent in the yellow shirt behind Jerry is Bil Keane…another past president of the N.C.S. who left us recently.

Registration is now open for WonderCon, which is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center — a hoot and a holler from Disneyland — from March 16, 2012 through March 18 of the same year. I've been to an awful lot of WonderCons and always had a good time. I expect the trend to continue.

WonderCon was founded in 1987 and held in Oakland, California until 2003 when it relocated to the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco. The migration coincided with the acquisition from the convention by the same non-profit organization that runs the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego. It and A.P.E. (the annual Alternative Press Expo) are what the staff there does when they're not working on Comic-Con. Traditionally the last few years, WonderCon has had somewhere around a fourth the attendance of Comic-Con (still a helluva lot o' people) and it's a bit more oriented towards comic books than to Hollywood and videogaming…though there is plenty for those interested in those areas.

The con is always well-run and enjoyable, and I love the location. I'd much rather it be there than in Anaheim but due to renovation work, the Moscone Center was not available for '12. I gather that the current thinking is to go back to S.F. in 2013, assuming the venue is available…but who knows? Maybe Anaheim will be such a smashing success that they won't want to go back. We shall see, we shall see.

I will be a guest at WonderCon and you may be surprised to learn I'll be hosting a mess of panels there. More guests have been announced and you can read what's up and register to attend over at the WonderCon website.

Several folks have alerted me that GSN (formerly Game Show Network) has reruns of What's My Line? and I've Got A Secret back in their late night lineup next week and at least the week after. These come and go from time to time and I'm curious as to the thinking here…

Are they contractually obligated to run these X weeks per year or lose the package? It would not be unprecedented for a TV network to keep paying for a show they no longer want to broadcast. Stations do that all the time, especially with a show that like these old Goodson-Todman programs, probably cost them little more than pocket change. For years, one Los Angeles TV station kept paying for (but not airing) the Roach Laurel & Hardy features. An assistant to the Station Manager told me they had no plans to run them — they didn't fit into current programming concepts — but "You never know when we might change our thinking and wish we had them." A more likely thought process was that they didn't want some other station to get the library and maybe figure out how to schedule and promote it into a success.

Or does GSN have some advertiser who wants them on, figuring it's the perfect demographic to sell scooters to seniors or some other such sales campaign? For the right sponsor, it might be cheaper and more effective than paying to run infomercials.

Or did someone at GSN just say, "Hey, let's give those another shot. They're so damned cheap that if we can get nineteen people to tune in, we can make money"?

I don't know why they're back…nor do I know where GSN is starting in the run or how long they'll leave them on this time. All I know is I have my TiVo set so I can watch whatever they put on for as long as they leave them on this time.